The past two decades in Canada have witnessed significant economic
restructuring and public policy innovation. While most research
concentrates on federal recovery plans and provincial adjustment
strategies, this article makes the case for studying actors and places
on the restructuring front lines. Offering an ideational analysis of
change dynamics in London, Ontario, a mid-sized manufacturing city, the
article reveals a pattern of incremental policy adjustment even as bold
ideas contesting the status quo were brought forward. Arguing that
particular institutional-political settings operative at different
governance scales shape the policy influence of ideas, the article
situates the London experience in broader theoretical debates about
institutional innovation. At the national level, ideas often supply
"weapons of mass persuasion" for political parties seeking
electoral breakthroughs. At the local level, ideas serve a different
purpose--providing focal points for problem-solving networks that over
time and across issues may bring about significant change.

The past two decades in Canada have been marked by significant
economic restructuring and public policy innovation. Difficult
adjustments to continental free trade across the 1990s have been
followed by an even more wrenching set of changes forced by the 2008
global financial crisis. Urgent concerns about global ecological
sustainability add yet another layer of complexity to the search for new
economic strategies. Given the scope and scale of these recent shocks to
the Canadian political-economic system, it is not surprising that public
policy scholars have focused their attention on the high politics of
federal recovery plans and provincial adjustment policies.

In this article we turn the spotlight on another scale of action
typically overlooked in relation to the big issues of economic
change--local municipalities and communities. Indeed, a growing body of
literature on the new localism argues that global shocks and continental
challenges play out in locally-specific ways as municipal governments,
typicially in partnership with community-based organizations, seek to
lead their places beyond crisis (Pike et al. 2006). The OECD and other
influential think tanks catalogue the creative work of cities across
Europe and North America testing new ideas and innovative practices
(OECD 2006; Wolfe 2009). What is needed now are more fine-grained
analyses of such local experimentation, probing how and whether these
actors reposition their economies for future success.

We take up this challenge drawing on a research tradition in
comparative political economy and international relations that uses an
ideas-centered approach to the study of policy making under stress and
uncertainty. This body of work has demonstrated the power of new
economic ideas in periods of crisis to shift policy approaches and alter
development trajectories. Thus far, the "ideational research
program" (Berman 2001, 238) has attracted limited interest from
scholars of local politics and policy. Making the case that such
inattention leaves a widening gap in our understanding of contemporary
economic restructuring, we apply a conceptual framework inspired by
Peter A. Hall's (1993) influential model of policy paradigms and
social learning to analyse local economic development.

Our case study is one Canadian city situated on the front lines of
economic change: London, Ontario. A mid-sized city in southern
Ontario's manufacturing belt west of Toronto, London has been
rocked in the past two decades by the flight of corporate head offices,
the closure of many traditional industries, and a limited ability to
attract and retain creative talent. Not surprisingly, municipal
officials, business leaders, and community groups have engaged in
intensive public discussion of the city's economic future, with
several different visions taking shape. Applying Hall's ideational
lens, we track London's progress toward a new economic development
paradigm. The analysis reveals a pattern of incremental policy
adjustment even as sweeping alternatives to the status quo are brought
forward. Observing that such change dynamics differ from those described
at the national level, we discuss the implications of the London
experience for broader theoretical debates about the role of ideas in
influencing policy change. We emphasize how particular
institutional-political contexts at different scales of governance shape
the policy influence of ideas. (1)

PART 1: Local Economic Development: Bringing Ideas In

Recently scholars of comparative political economy and
international relations have focused attention on the role that ideas
play in shaping political life and influencing public policy (Berman
2001 ; Blyth 2002). Concerned to understand how national governments and
international organizations respond to major transformations or shocks
in their policy environments, these writers argue that new ideas help
make sense of rapidly changing conditions and reduce uncertainty for
decision makers. As Blyth (2002, 6) summarizes, "structures do not
come with an instruction sheet"; in periods when such structures
come apart, the demand for new ideas is especially strong. What Berman
(2001) calls the ideational research agenda has now produced a robust
scholarly literature revealing how ideas emerge, acquire political
influence, and become embedded in organizational structures. The result
is a compelling approach to the study of institutional change and policy
innovation. The rise and fall of the Keynesian welfare state has been a
major preoccupation, producing rich accounts of crisis and change in the
turning point decades of the 1930s and 1980s (Hall 1989, 1993; Campbell
2001).

Yet this ideas-centered approach has not found resonance with
scholars of municipal government or local governance. Indeed, the
dominant approaches to local economic development offer few conceptual
openings to such a line of inquiry (Rast 2005, 64). The orthodoxy takes
its cue from Paul Peterson's (1981) classic study, City Limits,
which saw economic development policy as an undeniably important, but
uncontested municipal imperative. Beyond politics, municipal economic
development is everywhere and always driven by clear corporate
priorities and transparent market signals about inter-municipal
competition. In effect, only one set of ideas matters and once embedded
in the business-government structure, policy debate logically comes to a
close.

The main scholarly challenge to Peterson's deterministic
framework comes from regime theorists who explore variation in local
priorities and development strategies (Stone 1989; Mossberger 2009).
Analysing the governing coalitions that manage economic development,
regime theorists reveal the terms under which public and private actors
come together to get things done (Stone 1989). However, struck by the
enduring stability of the partnerships, regime theorists emphasize the
flow of material benefits--selective incentives and side payments--that
motivate the different partners to stay at the table, often over
decades. Once again, ideas recede into the background as potential
sources of change; development strategies come to be seen as the
by-product of various deals and compromises quite detached from larger
policy visions.

Thus, in relation to building a better understanding of the role of
ideas in local policy change we are left without much guidance from the
established frameworks. Of course, arguments that local scholarship lags
behind the comparative and international field in taking ideas seriously
could be viewed as true but trivial. After all, municipalities are
highly constrained governing entities and their main development
preoccupations have historically been mundane--either administering
upper level policy mandates or packaging the same set of incentives for
potential investors. Those interested in understanding the ideas that
inform local policy might just as well join their comparative and
international colleagues studying national/provincial governments and
global organizations (Bradford 2008).

We challenge that position on two grounds. First, we see mounting
evidence that the structural transformations related to contemporary
globalization are unsettling long-standing municipal thought and
practice (OECD 2006; Brenner 2004; Bradford 2007). Indeed, the
cross-pressures currently affecting local-scale actors are far from
familiar or routine. They include the transition to a knowledge-based
economy that is hollowing-out traditional urban economies, downtown
cores, and middle class neighbourhoods; the out-migration of youth that
is forcing many cities to rethink their identity and explore new forms
of diversity planning; and ecological pressures that reveal the limits
to sprawling growth and call for different thinking about land use,
transportation, waste management, and economic development.

Second, and complicating local responses to structural
transformations, are demands from upper level governments to do more
with less. On the one hand, the top-down narrative is straightforward:
resources are cutback, responsibilities expanded, and municipalities
muddle through their own version of offloading and downsizing. On the
other hand, upper-level government, encouraged by a host of think tanks
and international consultants, increasingly celebrate the local scale as
globalization's most promising sites of innovation and creativity
(Florida 2002; Porter 2003; Wolfe 2009). By this account, municipalities
are the leading edge of experimentation in economic development and the
laboratories for all manner of new policy ideas: knowledge clusters,
holistic development, smart growth, creative diversity, and social
innovation. As one local development textbook summarized recent
dynamics: "[f]undamental questions about what constitutes
'success' and 'development' in localities and
regions are being posed" (Pike et al. 2006, 3).

It is time for local studies to engage in a more substantive way
with questions about the role and influence of economic development
ideas. For this task, the conceptual advances made in the comparative
and international fields provide a good starting point. Berman (2001)
clarifies three distinct yet interrelated questions that researchers
must address: when do new ideas emerge; who carries them forward; and
how do they acquire lasting influence? On each of these questions, the
existing cross-national studies offer guidance. Crises, in the form of
sudden shocks or more incremental accumulation of policy failures, can
discredit existing authorities and their belief systems, opening the
intellectual-political space for new ideas to break through. While
experts or intellectuals draw new "road maps," their take-up
requires "carriers", individuals or groups able to persuade
others and mobilize support for change (Berman 2001, 235). In turn,
carriers work through institutions--political parties, interest
organizations, informal networks, bureaucratic agencies--to embed the
new ideas inside government.

Given the national level of analysis, these studies convey a
particular image of how new ideas influence policy innovation (Hall
1989; Bradford 1998). New ideas often supply "weapons of mass
persuasion" for political parties to challenge the socio-political
base of incumbent governments and their policy orientations (Stone et
al. 2006, 542). Ideological politicians use elections to realign
politics and rapidly shift the course of public policy. Such national
level restructuring accounts are instructive for analysing contemporary
local change. But the conceptual borrowing requires contextualization.
Change agents and switchpoint mechanisms operative at the national level
may not be locally engaged. Municipal politics are typically
non-partisan, local civil societies rarely feature the type of
encompassing interest groups underpinning stable cross-class coalitions,
and local administrations are highly permeable and often fragmented
organizations (Savitch and Kantor 2002). Without programmatic political
parties, powerful social partners, or strong bureaucracies, local change
dynamics will develope their own agents, pathways, and rhythms. In their
study of how national education reform ideas play out at the urban
scale, Stone et al. (2006, 529) make an important point:

In fact, the strength of the evolving national-level ideational
research program is that it pays attention to such variation. Berman
calls on ideas-centered scholarship to take full account of the
"particular causal pathways or mechanisms" by which ideas
influence outcomes (Berman 2001, 243). Moore's account of
"where ideas work" highlights the "different
institutional contexts" that shape agenda-setting at national and
local levels (Moore 1988, 72-75).

In these terms, Peter A. Hall's model of social learning and
policy change is especially suggestive (Hall 1993, 278-279). Hall draws
on Thomas Kuhn's argument that the development of science can be
understood as a succession of dominant paradigms coming apart through
periodic revolutions wherein an ascendant framework challenges and
ultimately replaces the embedded one, redefining the parameters of
legitimate research. Extending Kuhn's analogy to the policy-making
arena, Hall argues that during normal times, policy is made within the
context of a policy paradigm that defines legitimate policy goals and
instruments thereby bounding conceptions of the politically feasible and
desirable. In exceptional times, however, policy learning extends well
beyond adjustments at the margin. As the discursive boundaries expand,
established authorities are discredited, and a new policy paradigm takes
hold.

To capture the complexity of social learning processes, however,
Hall further specifies different orders based on the degree of change
involved and range of actors engaged. First-order change works within
the broad parameters of the existing paradigm, as established
authorities fine-tune their policy instruments to address certain policy
anomalies. Second-order change involves deeper questioning of the
dominant paradigm, as new or different actors publicize evidence of
significant policy failure and formulate alternative paradigms.
Third-order change is about paradigm shift. First order adjustments and
second order debates are both transcended as supporters of an
alternative paradigm forge coalitions, secure power, and
institutionalize new ideas.

The particular strength of Hall's model for local level
analysis stems from its careful attention to the evolutionary and
incremental dimensions of policy change. National-level analyses
describe rapid and comprehensive policy transformations when new ideas
realign political conflict. As Stone and his colleagues underscore,
however, in the municipal institutional-political setting, the prospects
of major policy breakthroughs through electoral realignment or
bureaucratic innovation are remote. From this perspective, Hall's
first and second-order change speak directly to forms of social learning
more attuned to local settings. (2) In the local institutional-political
context, paradigm shifts, if and when they occur, will almost certainly
express a logic of change quite different from one powered by
ideological parties or powerful bureaucracies. Hall's three order
learning model is sensitive to such variation and therefore offers a
promising framework for studying the specific ideas, carriers, and
mechanisms in local settings.

PART 2: Local Ideas That Matter: Three Development Paradigms

The remainder of this article applies Hall's orders of change
framework to interpret social learning processes about economic
development in London, Ontario. In the 1990s, London's traditional
strengths in financial services and secondary manufacturing were hit
hard by North American free trade, and in 2008-09, the so-called Great
Recession devastated Southwestern Ontario's key automotive assembly
and parts sector. Between 2004 and 2008 London's manufacturing
employment declined by 12,000, or 41% of the sector's workforce
(Hunter 2009). Often seen as unremarkable and largely ignored by urban
scholars, London now merits attention because it may represent an
emerging urban reality as long settled development trajectories falter,
leaving local leaders in search of new ideas to navigate between harsh
external shocks and more complex internal demands.

To situate the case study we begin with brief exposition of the
three key policy paradigms that came to structure London's
development debates across the last decade of the 20th century and first
decade of the 21st. Surveying the scholarly literature and think tank
reports, we identify a limited number of what Hall would label policy
paradigms around which local goals and instruments in Canadian
municipalities have clustered (OECD 2006; Savitch and Kantor 2002; Pike
et al. 2006).

Growth Machine: Landing Industry

In urban political economy analysis, the growth machine refers to
powerful alliances of land-based elites, specifically developers,
realtors, financiers, whose economic fortunes are tied to the rapid
growth of their municipality (Molotch 1976). Supported by a wider circle
of boosters in the media, utilities, chambers of commerce, and
government, growth machines seek decisions that increase the value of
land and revenue streams flora property taxes, rents, and profits.
Growth comes to be seen not simply as a material benefit for particular
elites but as the basis for broad socio-political consensus (Peterson
1981). The overarching development goal is attracting footloose capital
investment, often in direct competition with neighbouring municipalities
controlled by their own growth machines. To this end, a development
strategy division of labour typically emerges between the municipal
government and the business leaders, with the former supplying abundant
serviced land and the latter undertaking place-marketing to potential
investors. Competition among municipalities turns on the mix of
incentives, subsidies, and information offered to ensure a smooth
landing for incoming firms and plants

Knowledge Mobilization: Growing Clusters

A second development paradigm focuses on knowledge mobilization,
challenging some of the growth machine's key assumptions and
metrics. The central concern is innovation and the resiliency of local
firms in the face of ideas-driven competition. Rather than trying to
attract any-and-all external investment, knowledge mobilization
advocates are more selective in their targets and engaged with potential
investors as innovation partners. Firm success requires institutional
support for upgrading technological capabilities, managerial
competencies, and skill levels. Firms need access to multiple channels
of knowledge, both formal and tacit, from a range of sources: other
firms, universities and colleges, research centers, and governments.
They must be embedded in an innovation system that connects
entrepreneurs to local suppliers and global pipelines of industry
knowledge (Gertler and Wolfe 2004). A high performing innovation system
will arrange the physical and social infrastructures appropriate to a
city-region's particular's sectoral strengths and clusters of
excellence (Porter 2003). Often attracting political interest flora
creative city builders, it proposes "associational governance"
that brings together knowledge producers and users to apply innovations
across the economy and municipal institutions (Cooke and Morgan 1998;
Florida 2002; Landry 2000).

Social Sustainability: Shifting Green

The third paradigm distances itself from the growth machine and
knowledge mobilization projects, viewing both as too economistic in
their preoccupations with either rapid growth or technological
innovation (Morgan 2004). Each fails to incorporate distributional and
ecological considerations into their frameworks. By contrast, socially
sustainable development is "compatible with the harmonious
evolution of civil society, fostering an environment conducive to the
compatible cohabitation of culturally and socially diverse groups while
at the same time encouraging social integration, with improvements the
quality of life for all segments of the population" (Stren and
Polese 2000, 15-16). Observing that some of the most innovative and
creative cities are also the most polarized and segregated (Morgan
2004), these advocates argue that governance needs to include social and
community movements expressing "a broader notion of
'development' encompassing health, well-being and quality of
life in localities and regions" (Pike et al. 2006, 114). This
paradigm often works at the neighbourhood scale, organizing
community-driven renewal in inner cities and older suburbs where urban
poverty and environmental threats are increasingly concentrated. Valuing
citizen engagement and broad-based participation, municipal planners are
empowered with infill development tools for brownfield revitalization,
growth boundaries, and heritage preservation (Healey 2007).

PART 3: Economic Restructuring in London, 1990-2008

Having outlined the three key development paradigms, we now turn to
discussion of their roll-out and resonance in London. A mid-sized
Canadian city, with a population of about 350,000, London is the
country's tenth largest market area, serving as a regional hub for
Southwestern Ontario agricultural producers and smaller cities. Located
at the junction of three major provincial expressways and the Ontario
city closest to all three major US border crossings (Detroit, Buffalo,
and Port Huron), London prospered in the second half of the 20th century
as a site of choice for many subsidiaries of American manufacturers,
notably in food and beverage, automotive parts, aircraft, and locomotive
assembly. Once known for its strength in banking and insurance, London
has more recently developed a profile in health research and
post-secondary education through the University of Western Ontario and
Fanshawe College.

Two major rounds of restructuring (the 1990s free trade shock) and
recession (the 2008-2009 global downturn) have affected London's
economy. In response, various local actors have mobilized around the
three development paradigms we have described. As analysed below, the
initital round of change involved only the limited adaptations to the
city's established growth machine of the kind associated with
Hall's first-order change. Subsequent debates, however, engaged
more fundamental questions about the city's development trajectory,
raising the possibility of a paradigm shift.

Retooling the Growth Machine: First-Order Change

Continental restructuring in the 1990s hit London's economic
base hard. Financial head offices relocated, large manufacturing plants
closed or moved to lower cost North American regions, and the
city's once vibrant retail and commercial core visibly deteriorated
(Cobban 2003). Across the decade, London's economic performance,
population growth, and median family income fell behind those of its key
mid-sized municipal competitors in southern Ontario (Statistics Canada
2008). The corporate flight not only drained away the business leaders
and philanthropic families who had invested heavily in social and
cultural institutions, but also signaled to younger professionals that
the local labour market would no longer offer the same opportunities for
career mobility. A groundswell of concern rose among civic leaders about
economic prospects. In 1997, the London Chamber of Commerce convened a
group of some 40 business leaders under the banner "Advance
London" to revitalize the city's economic performance.

Most concerned to replace lost industry and expedite development
approvals, Advance London recommended a new economic development agency
freed from what the business leaders saw as an incompetent municipal
bureaucracy. Structured as a public-private partnership, the proposed
London Economic Development Corporation (LEDC) would be overseen by a
business-dominated Board of Directors, consistent with the Chamber of
Commerce view that "business professionals prefer dealing directly
with other business people" (LEDC 1998, 14). In 1998, the City
established the LEDC with a mandate "to strengthen the London
business environment so as to improve the economic well-being of all
London citizens" LEDC 1998, 3) The LEDC's Chief Executive
Officer, well-connected London businessperson, John Kime, began
revamping municipal economic development. External business attraction
emerged as the first priority. The goal was to exploit London's
locational advantage half-way between Detroit and Toronto to benefit
from the recent federal negotiation of the North American Free Trade
Agreement and the provincially-led annexation of surrounding communities
that tripled London's geographic size. The federal and provincial
actions combined to make available new lands for development along a
major international trade corridor (Martin, 2007).

The LEDC's external orientation received strong endorsement
and a tangible boost in 2000 when the City launched its 20 year $65
million Industrial Lands Strategy targeting seven industrial parks
(Perspective London 2007). Flush with serviceable, flat greenfields, the
City looked to compete hard for manufacturing operations: they hoped for
the advanced and specialized kind, but would accept warehouse and other
distribution facilities requiring more space than knowledge. The City
planned to keep available for development of 180 acres of serviced land,
attracting industrial investors through roads, sewers, utilities, and
the like. As a further enticement, the City waived development fees for
industrial buildings (Perspective London 2008). London's specific
attraction approach was called speculative development, whereby the
risks of upfront public investments in facilities would be managed by
aggressive tenant recruitment and marketing by the LEDC through a single
business service window detailing site availability, infrastructure
access, and workforce skills (Perspective London 2008).

LEDC's vision with the industrial lands/external attraction
strategy was to position London at the center of a Southwestern Ontario
automotive cluster. LEDC leaders described an economic geography where
Japanese assembly plants --known to prefer smaller city locations for
the non-union environment and rural work ethic--established operations
in Woodstock and Ingersoll, while European auto parts suppliers, drawn
to the amenities and culture of larger urban centers, located in London
(De Bono 2007). The LEDC had always acted on the premise that for London
manufacturing and distribution activities had built-in location
advantages over life sciences and high technology, and that it was
therefore hard to compete head-to-head with other well-established
Ontario new economy hot spots such as Waterloo or Ottawa. Indeed, the
LEDC's outreach program was considered by many economic development
professionals to be the "Gold Standard in Canada as a business
attraction initiative in the manufacturing sector" (City of London
et al. 2005, 14). National automotive analyst, Dennis DesRosiers
reported that "London has the best record out there in landing
automotive parts plants" (De Bono 2007, A5). For their part, City
officials believed "London had become one of Ontario's premier
destinations for the development of industrial land" (Perspective
London 2007).

In terms of the three economic development paradigms, the LEDC
embodied the growth machine. Its leadership was business dominated and
focused on land development. Overtures for more community representation
on the LEDC were rejected; initial proposals for including community
economic development and community-sponsored investment funds in the
LEDC toolkit were not acted upon (Belanger 2006). The LEDC's
performance measures emphasized quantitative growth (employment, income,
annual acres of industrial land, firms recruited, commercial and retail
development) reflecting the growth machine's economistic ethos.
With this focus, the LEDC built a strong profile for London among
manufacturing site selectors in Europe and North America (LEDC 2003).

In relation to Hall's concept of policy learning, the
LEDC's renovation of London's growth machine paradigm conforms
well to first-order change. Its creation responded to concerns among
business leaders and some government officials that the City's
bureaucratically-managed instruments for investment attraction were
ill-suited to changing market conditions and inter-municipal
competition. In place of the government department, an arm's length
agency led by business took charge, mandated to bring new credibility
and focus to external recruitment practices still considered the
foundation for sound local economic development.

Knowledge Mobilization Or Social Sustainability? Second-Order
Change

In 2005, the City completed a strategic plan that identified five
civic priorities with economic development at the top. With nearly $30
million of the $360 million annual municipal operating budget devoted to
economic development, concerns began to surface about the LEDC's
overall performance. Was sufficient attention being paid to nurturing
London's own knowledge economy assets in health products and life
sciences? Were the incoming manufacturing operations sufficiently
embedded in an infrastructure for innovation such that local multipliers
actually took hold? With these questions, some City officials and
business leaders worried about the lack of synergy between the
LEDC's outward focus and London's nascent high technology
community (DeBono 2006; LEDC 2006).

Important here was the recruitment of a new Chief Administrative
Officer, Jeff Fielding, from Kitchener, a city located in Waterloo
Region's Technology Triangle. On his arrival, he delivered a
wake-up call to the City Council (Miller 2004). Pulling together trend
line data, Fielding's team documented London's declining
population growth rate in comparison to competitor cities, and drew
attention to labour shortages rooted in a persistent failure to either
retain young professionals or attract skilled immigrants. Challenged by
Fielding as to whether the city sought to play in the municipal big
leagues, the Deputy Mayor conceded that London had been sliding over the
past decade, that it had limited influence on the provincial or national
stages, and that a new development strategy was in order (Miller 2004).
These sentiments resonated strongly with an emerging network of
technology entrepreneurs who believed the LEDC was insufliciently
attuned to their growth potential.

Fielding's wake-up call set in motion two novel policy
formulation processes unfolding across 2005, each representing the type
of social learning that Peter A. Hall links to second-order change, be
first learning process was a task force on London's potential as a
Creative City. The second was an economic review titled London's
Next Economy. Together they made the case for London development to be
guided by the knowledge mobilization paradigm.

The Creative City Task Force was a 16 member inquiry with
cross-sectoral membership from the arts, technology, business, immigrant
settlement, municipal government, architecture, and tourism sectors
(City of London 2005). With a mandate to change "the way London
thinks," the Task Force focused on issues of cultural diversity,
workforce development, and urban design. Its 87 recommendations were
framed by a general declaration that "London's assessment,
future prosperity and downtown development will be driven in large part
by the creative industries and the people who work in them" (City
of London 2005, 7). Drawing on research findings that a city's
cultural diversity and social connections are crucial for prosperity,
the Task Force argued that London's conservative reputation, siloed
communities, and lack of buzz were all barriers to economic development.
London could reach its destiny as the Regional Capital of Southwestern
Ontario with a new governance structure quite unlike that associated
with the growth machine. With a mandate to convene partnerships across
education, business, government, and cultural sectors, a new
"Prosperity Congress" would "champion common causes"
for the creative city (City of London 2005, 15).

The second learning exercise pursued similar themes. London's
Next Economy was a hard-hitting report from a leading London technology
entrepreneur who shared the Task Force's concern about
London's development trajectory. Challenging the growth machine
paradigm, the report rejected London's "past modesty and
conservative style" and called for "more passionate,
entrepreneurial environment" suited to the new economy
(London's Next Economy 2005, 10). It argued that
"London's efforts in developing homegrown knowledge-based
business has been below expectations" and concluded that if London
was to transcend "branch plant status" it "must
collectively invest in its own organic growth program with the same
vigor it has pursued its attraction agenda" (City of London et al.
2005, 15). Priorities quite different from the growth machine emerged,
notably land development that clustered technology driven industries in
a downtown tech alley and the university's Research Park rather
than vacant land at the city's edge, and external attraction
efforts that were more selective in linking firms to local suppliers and
to researchers at the university and college.

In sum, the Creative Cities Task Force and London's Next
Economy packaged new ideas drawn from the knowledge mobilization
paradigm. The reports rallied influential supporters. The Dean of the
university's renowned business school lauded both exercises as
groundbreaking for London, signaling that the city was "embarking
on an all-important, community-wide partnership" (Stephenson 2005,
3). The LEDC was immediately reorganized with its CEO replaced by a
younger leader with deep roots in the high technology sector and
research networks.

Interestingly, just as these initiatives were challenging the
embedded development paradigm for its inattention to knowledge and
creativity, advocates of the social sustainability perspective--who had
never really been part of the local economic debate--weighed in with a
different critique. Environmentalists and antipoverty advocates argued
that the growth machine's preference for speculative land
development ignored the social and ecological implications of
sprawl-based growth. The chairperson of the Urban League of London noted
the city's rising poverty and homelessness and questioned
priorities: "I wouldn't want to see $65 million set aside so
we could have $65 million worth of truck stops or warehouses along the
401" (Dauphinee 2001, A3). In fact, such concerns dated back to a
public engagement exercise in the 1990s known as "Vision
'96." As one city councillor later reflected, the intent was
to "plan the city differently to protect agriculture [and]
environmental features" and envision "an improved quality of
life" (Martin 2007, A8). However, these recommendations remained
just that--there was neither the political will nor the bureaucratic
capacity to implement the sustainability ideas. Not surprisingly,
London's growth machine and industrial lands strategy never
included the "eco-industrial networks, clusters and parks"
that had been implemented in several other Canadian cities (Conference
Board of Canada 2007). While the London business community has
frequently mobilized around core policy interests, urban social
movements have been relatively fragmented pursuing issue-specific causes
quite independently (LCRC 1999). Absent are strong peak associations or
inter-sectoral councils framing community-wide agendas and engaging
city-wide development debates.

Surprisingly, social sustainability concerns moved center stage in
London politics following the 2003 municipal election. When the newly
elected Council, based on what critics saw as a technical loophole,
chose to ignore the results of a referendum calling for reorganizing
municipal governance, London's formerly disparate social and
environmental groups rallied around a new movement named Imagine London.
As its name suggests, the coalition's purpose was to envision a
qualitatively different development path for the city implemented
through a Council governance structure that would replace the Board of
Control executive body that Imagine London saw as too closely allied
with land developers. The vision was rooted in the social sustainability
paradigm: a compact city of neighbourhoods valuing human scale, mixed
use, and infill development to revitalize the downtown core. In 2005,
the group took the case to the Ontario Municipal Board, calling not just
for the abolition of the Board of Control but for formation of small
neighbourhood-based wards. In a surprise decision, the provincial
authority accepted Imagine London's ward structure recommendation,
and cleared the path for a restructured Council to abolish the Board of
Control.

In the wake of the OMB decision, the 2006 municipal election
brought to City Council several new members supporting socially
sustainable development. The result has been a fractious City Council,
with politicians increasingly divided across varying development
visions. Observers worried about an incoherent or stalemated political
system characterized by mean-spiritedness and lack of cohesive vision
(Belanger 2007b). In 2007, when the Council Planning Committee refused
to expand the city's urban growth boundary to accommodate a
developer's request for a $80 million industrial park without prior
assessment of the financial implications for the City, the Board of
Control's Deputy Mayor complained that a "whining socialist
cabal" was stopping progress (Belanger 2007a). The Chamber of
Commerce CEO urged the Mayor to appoint an outside facilitator to find
consensus. But when one long time Councillor announced that she would
not seek re-election in 2010 she stated that the Council's
"camps are so divided there is no bringing them together"
(Belanger 2010, E1).

In sum, the years between 1998 and 2008 witnessed heated debate
about the course of development in London. The long established growth
machine paradigm was renewed through formation of the London Economic
Development Corporation only to be challenged from different
perspectives: one calling for knowledge clusters and the other for
socially sustainability. Overall, London's once closed and
business-dominated decision making became politicized as the alternative
paradigms found public expression in task forces, research networks, and
social movements. The critiques went beyond fine tuning the status quo:
they expressed Hall's second-order learning, thereby raising the
possibility of a development paradigm shift.

PART 4: Beyond the Great Recession? Toward Third-Order Change in
London

Our account of debates across London's decade of free trade
restructuring between 1998 and 2008 revealed unprecedented turbulence
for a city long known for its economic stability, political
conservatism, and policy continuity. However, there was still more to
come. In late 2008, London's economy was rocked by the global
financial crisis and plunged into its worst recession since the Great
Depression. The statistics for 2009 tell a grim story: an unemployment
rate skyrocketing to over 11%, the second highest in the country; social
assistance claims increasing 20%; and more than 8,000 jobs disappearing
with only part-time jobs showing any resiliency (Hunter 2009).

The depth and breadth of the latest economic shock triggered
widespread discussion and urgent calls to action. The London Free Press
launched a year long special series "Beyond the Crisis"
reporting on problems and convening local leaders and outside experts to
advise on new strategies. The federal government announced plans for a
regional development agency for Southern Ontario, and London municipal,
academic, and business leaders participated actively in forming a
regional economic alliance extending from Waterloo to Windsor.
Complicating London's challenges were economic studies (Martin
Prosperity Institute 2009; Conference Board of Canada 2010) from
national think tanks that took a dim view of the city's economic
prospects, especially in comparison with key mid-sized competitors such
as Waterloo and Ottawa.

It is precisely such moments of widely perceived crisis that Peter
A. Hall interprets as tipping points for third-order change (Hall 1993).
In his study of Great Britain's monetarist revolution, Hall noted
that the devastating 1978 winter of discontent cleared the path for the
Thatcher Conservatives to drive the paradigm shift from Keynesianism.
However, the local institutional-political setting makes such dramatic
realignments unlikely. Instead, local change occurs when big ideas
become translated into specific civic purposes that in their immediacy
and concreteness "bring together people who don't share a
world view" (Stone et al. 2006, 529-530). Over time and across a
host of concrete projects, inter-organizational networks deliver
cumulative results that can produce significant policy change. Through
such pragmatic collaborations, municipalities and communities may move
beyond what Hall terms second-order conflicts to discover new common
ground around shared civic purposes.

The unprecedented pressures set in motion by the 2008 Great
Recession in London offer some evidence to support this account of how
local paradigm shifts come about. In September 2009, the City and the
LEDC co-hosted the first ever multi-sectoral London Economic Summit.
They called on public, private, and community sectors to recognize that
their goals now "must be aligned, coordinated and mutually
supportive in order to achieve success" (LEDC 2009). Observing that
other cities are much further ahead than London, the Summit's
keynote speaker, new University of Western Ontario President Amit
Chakma, emphasized the "need to be innovative in our approach"
and "to speak with a single voice and shape our own future"
(Chakma 2009, Online).

While such summitteering might be dismissed as simply talk, there
has been concrete follow-through. We close the paper by highlighting
three purposeful inter-organizational networks, all learning by doing
about how London's different development paradigms intersect in
practice. As such, they represent the kind of ideational hybrids and
purposeful networks that Stone and his colleagues argue can bring about
meaningful change over time.

Learning by Doing (1): Diverse City

This collaboration is a legacy of the CCTF, taking the form of a
community-based coalition of service providers, municipal departments
and agencies, businesses and trade unions, and university researchers
(City of London 2006; City of London and United Way of London &
Middlesex, 2008). It brings together priorities from each of the social
sustainability, growth machine, and knowledge mobilization paradigms.
The value of this multi-sectoral initiative has been confirmed in two
forms of recognition. First, London won a national multiculturalism
award for its partnerships in "fighting racism, creating inclusive
work places and stimulating dialogue and action on making Canada a
nation open to the diversity of the human condition"(City of London
2008, 1). Second, upper level governments have made substantial
investments. The provincial government established in London its first
credential recognition centre outside Toronto and the federal government
funded a Local Immigration Partnership Council to institutionalize the
collaboration. London now features a multi-level governance structure
implementing community-driven priorities on diversity crossing economic,
social, and cultural priorities (Bradford and Esses 2010).

Learning by Doing (2): Gateway City

At the 2009 Economic Summit, the City confirmed plans to make
London a regional transportation logistics hub for moving freight
internationally by rail, highway, and air (LEDC 2009). This project
blends growth machine and knowledge mobilization priorities. Like the
growth machine, it seeks comparative advantage in London's location
along the NAFTA trade corridor and its transportation cost advantages
over Greater Toronto Area competitors. But it also emphasizes knowledge
mobilization, leveraging London's traditional locational advantages
for a transportation technology cluster featuring inter-modal logistics,
aircraft manufacturing, and aviation design. The City has forged a
'Gateway City' coalition: the federal and provincial
governments; the two post-secondary institutions; and local firms in
global supply chains. Synergies are emerging: Fanshawe College launched
a $31 million program in transportation trade and logistics, the
City's new economic development fund made Gateway investments its
first priority, and the federal development agency came to the table
with $8 million (Perspective London 2010).

Learning by Doing (3): Inclusive City

London's downtown core and inner city neighbourhoods have
suffered from disinvestment and decline. One troubled area known as Old
East Village has launched a promising revitalization through multiple
partnerships. The City offered various investment incentives; a
professional team from the Ontario Provincial Planners Institute drafted
a revitalization plan with community input; and local developers,
retailers, artists and residents responded to new opportunities. At the
center of the collaborative process was the Old East London Business
Improvement Area, an inter-organizational network that used a
"community development methodology to affect social economic
revitalization" (Meyer 2010, 2). Through the revitalization
network, it is estimated that by 2012, investments totalling $200
million will result in new parkland, a mix of housing options,
commercial expansion, and a cultural district featuring a refurbished
theatre, a clay arts center and potters' guild, and an 'avant
garde' performing arts hall. With its blend of creative city
business themes, infill planning, and high rise living, the Old East
Village project brings together elements of all three economic
development paradigms.

In sum, each of these three recent collaborations represents a new
and different way of doing economic development in London. As ideational
and organizational hybrids, they variously blend growth, knowledge, and
sustainability goals. Whether they endure and scale-up to produce
Hall's third-order change remains to be seen. As Stone and his
colleagues conclude, network-based collaborations that express "big
ideas in pragmatic action" remain an important yet fragile part of
an emerging local governance landscape (Stone et al. 2006, 531).

Conclusion

This article has tackled two main tasks. First, it sought to unpack
the course of economic development debates and practices in London, a
mid-sized city on the front lines of major restructuring challenges in
the 1990s and 2000s. In addition, it explored the value of an ideational
approach to interpreting the local policy shifts. Our departure point
was that in the contemporary period of intensified global-local flows
and interactions, city actors increasingly find themselves engaged in
substantive policy discussion about the economic future.

In relation to our first task, London's recent economic
development reveals a complex story of incremental adjustment to long
established strategies, framed by fundamental debates over appropriate
development goals and instruments. Further, we traced a movement over
time in the tone and style of social learning as quite polarized
positions in the early and mid 2000s found more pragmatic expression
towards the end of the decade in several purpose-driven networks
addressing issues of immediate concern to multiple local interests.
Using Hall's concept of policy paradigms to conceptualize the flow
of ideas, we highlighted particular forms of learning and change
pathways in London. Our findings underscore important variation in the
role of ideas and their influence. At the national level, ideas may well
be weapons of mass persuasion deployed by political parties campaigning
for electoral advantage. At the local level, ideas can serve a different
and perhaps more modest purpose--providing focal points for
problem-solving networks that over time and across issues may bring
about significant change. Bringing an ideas-centered approach to local
studies is a worthwhile scholarly endeavour but careful attention must
be paid to the specific content, carriers, and mechanisms of diffusion
as these are likely to vary by governance scale and institutional
setting.

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(1) The research draws on 50 semi-structured interviews conducted
between 2007 and 2009 with individuals from the municipal government,
business community, and community organizations knowledgeable about
London economic development. The research assistance of Kadie Ward,
Paris Meilleur, Kate Graham, and Matthew Patterson is gratefully
acknowledged. This study is supported by the SSHRC funded project
Innovation and Creativity in Canadian City-Regions directed by Dr. David
A. Wolfe at the University of Toronto. I would like to thank three
anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback and Dr. Marie-Odile
Trepanier for translating the abstract.

(2) One reviewer pointed to interesting parallels between
Hall's interpretation of policy innovation through social learning
and evolving debates in urban planning about the importance of social
learning as a strategy to link knowledge and action in community
settings. Beyond the scope of this article, such a comparative
exploration of urban planning and political science research traditions
would generate further insight into the interplay of ideas and
institutions in local economic development, especially in connecting the
spatial and social dimensions of policy innovation. Major contributors
to this planning tradition include John Friedmann (1987), Patsy Healey
(1997), and Judith Innes and David Booher (2010).

The role of ideas in the local setting is quite different from
their role in the media-infused battles at the national level.
Local arenas are frequently nonpartisan, with actors focused on
immediate concerns, daily demands and scarce resources. Because
concrete actions may be more important than ideological posture,
mass persuasion may be of less concern than the enlistment of
scattered cadres of task-specific activists.